


Frankie Say Relax

by st_aurafina



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 19:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/pseuds/st_aurafina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tegan needs a break from grim destruction and megalomaniacal plots. Some happy drunk downtime with Nyssa wouldn't go astray, either. Unfortunately, the Doctor has terrible taste in parties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frankie Say Relax

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LillyRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LillyRose/gifts).



"What we need is a party," said Tegan. "It's been all grim destruction and megalomaniacal plots, lately. I want to dress up and dance." And get just drunk enough that pashing your best friend seems the best possible outcome of the night. Tegan didn't voice this last part, but the Doctor looked at her thoughtfully, then rummaged in his pockets. 

"I'm sure I tucked an invitation away in here somewhere. To something." 

"I do enjoy parties," said Nyssa. She squeezed Tegan's arm. "I think it's a wonderful idea." 

"Well, I hate parties," said Adric. "What are they for? Such a waste of time." 

Tegan favoured him with a pitying glance. "Poor boy," she said. "You'll understand, when you're older.

Adric made a snorting sound of outrage, and assumed a lofty expression. 

Nyssa laughed, but kindly. "You don't have to go! The Doctor can drop us off, and you can go and see something worthy." 

"Ah!" said the Doctor, and extracted a thin plastic card that shimmered blue and green with enticing holographic letters. "I've got just the thing! Flash get-together for the party-goers and an immensely interesting astronomical event for the nay-sayers." 

"What kind of astronomical event?" Nyssa's expression was suddenly torn. 

Tegan took her hands in her own and gave them a shake. "No! Come to the party! Fancy drinks and nibblies on little sticks. Dressing up. Flirting. Fun. You do remember fun, right?" 

"Astronomy is fun, Tegan," Nyssa said, solemnly. Then she grinned. "But so is dressing up." 

The Doctor passed her the invitation. "Well, then we're decided." He turned to the controls, and set the rotor in motion. 

The big blue bloke with the guest list was seriously uptight, fretting about security and unsent RSVPs, while the planet Earth bubbled and smouldered miles beneath them. 

"It's simply not possible, I'm afraid; the guest list was settled a year ago. Everyone was given the opportunity to respond at the time, and we can only hold so many places. In any case, this invitation was issued to the Doctor and a Miss Sarah Jane Smith, and neither of you match the genetic profile of those people." He looked down his long blue nose at them, one eyebrow raised.

Tegan clenched a fist; she might not understand genetic profiles, but no seven foot blue berk in a lamé leisure suit was going to insult her breeding and get away without a black eye.

Nyssa put a cool hand on Tegan's shoulder, and gave it a squeeze. She raised her chin with implacable, regal patience and began the process of staring the Steward down. 

Tegan took a deep breath. Nyssa could turn on her Daughter of Traken persona, and Tegan could admire it from afar, where she wouldn't be tempted to clock the guy. 

She left Nyssa to argue with the man, and stomped to the other end of the atrium, where the little blue guys who seemed to do all the actual work were unloading a jukebox. 

The party hadn't even started – wasn't due to start for two hours, thanks to the TARDIS' sporadic accuracy – and it was already turning into a bit of a downer. This space station was seriously depressing, for one thing: cold as hell, with every vaulted window offering an unimpeded view of Earth floating serenely in front of a roiling sun. 

"Doctor, you have the most morbid taste in parties." This was worse than Cranleigh Hall. Playing cricket at an English manor house with a resident madman in the attic was gruesome, but it didn't hold a candle to nibbling canapés while the planet exploded. 

Below the chatter of the blue workmen, Tegan heard the wheeze of dematerialisation, and her heart jumped. She walked carefully over the slippery marble floor to the sub-foyer where the TARDIS had dropped them off. 

Maybe the Doctor had realised he'd dropped them off too early? Or he and Adric had finished gawping over the swollen, dying sun and had come to collect them? Whatever. She'd grab the Doctor by the ear, and force him take them all to Toowong, in 1979. New Year's Eve at the Regatta Hotel – the best party in the history of Brisbane. As far as she could remember, anyway. 

She skidded to a halt when she saw a strange woman squeezing through the TARDIS doors with an oversized rucksack over her shoulder. 

"I told you, Professor, I'm rubbish at parties! I don't do the posh stuff, you know that." The woman wore a black puffa jacket, and her only concession to formal wear seemed to be a bright yellow fascinator propped awkwardly on the side of her head. A muttered conversation came from within the TARDIS interior, and the woman made a face, then stepped out onto the marble floor of the station. Before she could go any further, though, a red umbrella handle caught the straps of the rucksack and pulled it away from her. She shrugged out of it and stomped off without looking back, her face stony. 

A short man in a dark coat stood in the doorway, watching, his expression unreadable until his eyes met Tegan's. Then his face crinkled into a grin of recognition, and he doffed his hat in her direction, before hefting the rucksack into the TARDIS and closing the door. A moment later, the TARDIS vanished, and Tegan, her head spinning, turned to face the woman. 

"Stupid kind of party it's going to be without explosives," she said to Tegan. Then her eyes caught the view from the windows, as the sun smouldered and threw spouts of flame. "Oh, that's wicked!" 

"Excuse me," Tegan began. 

"You're excused!" said the woman, cheerfully, and pressed her nose to the glass, the better to take in the scene of destruction.

"You came out of the TARDIS." 

That was enough to pull the woman's attention away from the dying star. "You know about the TARDIS? Oh, no, have we crossed time streams? I hope I don't meet myself. That's so embarrassing. And potentially lethal." She did not seem excessively distressed by the notion, however. 

"You travel on the TARDIS?" Tegan wrinkled her forehead up, trying to sort out the convoluted nature of time travel in her head. "Oh, with another Doctor? That was the Doctor I saw, wasn't it? He recognised me." 

"Well, that means he's from a later regeneration than yours. It's easy, once you get the hang of it." The woman stuck out her hand. "I'm Ace. I'm supposed to go to a stupid party and learn things. Diplomatic things," she added, darkly. 

Tegan shook her hand. "Tegan, and don't bother. This is the worst party ever; they won't let you in without a genetic analysis and a timely RSVP." 

Ace gave a shout of triumph. "Ha! Left the invitation in my rucksack." She tipped her head up and shouted to the ceiling. "So take that, Professor!" 

By now, the Steward was crouching a little to look into Nyssa's face as she steadfastly refused to acknowledge his existence. Ace and Tegan wandered towards the jukebox, where small blue people in black leather dungarees polished it with fur mitts. 

"What's she doing? Ignoring him into submission?" Ace flicked through the menu on the jukebox. 

Tegan watched Nyssa fondly. "If anyone can, it's Nyssa of Traken. She's one of those people who always knows the perfect retort. Me? I don't think of it until hours later." 

Ace fished in her pockets for coins. "You like her, don't you?" 

Tegan flushed. "Of course I do; she's my best friend." She didn't want to be defensive. This wasn't Brisbane in the 1970's, it was the far-off future. Who knew what was possible? Liking girls, wanting to kiss them in the dark while loud music played, that was probably completely normal. Blasé. Nothing of note. 

"Sorry," said Ace. "Didn't mean to be nosy. Part of the whole 'Go forth, Ace, and learn the mysteries of the universe' charter. Having said that, I think your friend is definitely keeping an eye on me." 

Tegan sneaked a look at Nyssa; she was still brow-beating the Steward into submission, but she was doing it with a wary eye on the two of them. She blushed again, and fiddled with the menu on the jukebox. Her finger hovered over Spandau Ballet's Gold. For a futuristic jukebox, there was a hell of a lot of New Romantics in here. And someone who couldn't spell Brittany. She reached out, snatched a coin from Ace's palm and slipped it into the slot. "What will we have, then? A bit of Frankie?" She pressed the button, and the pounding bass echoed across the atrium. The blue guys in coveralls gave a collective shriek and clustered around the machine and shooed them away with frantic gestures. 

"Ah ha, mid-Eighties, Earth," Ace said, triumphantly, as they walked slowly back to the observation windows. "I mean, your accent's a dead give-away – you don't hear it anywhere else in the universe, which is a bit disturbing now I'm thinking about it – but now you've given me an era, too." 

"Is that what your Doctor does? Sends you out to solve mysteries? Are you earning merit badges?" It sounded a bit much like work to Tegan, but Ace's grin was wide and ferocious. 

"That's it exactly! You could say I've just finished my Toppling Governments badge, and now I'm working on Basic Diplomacy." She shook her head in mock-sorrow. "Which is not as much fun, and therefore not going so well." 

"I don't know," said Tegan. "You've sussed me out pretty thoroughly. I think you're doing all right." 

Nyssa stalked over to them, with a very un-Nyssa-like cross expression on her face. She probably had all the merit badges in diplomacy, but even so, she was bristling with tension. "Tegan, that is a very tedious man, and I don't believe any party is worth the trouble of dealing with him." 

Tegan wrapped her into a hug. "Tedious? That's scathing, coming from you."

"I'm sorry. I know you were looking forward to a party, but I really think we'd have a better time watching the planet blow up on our own." Nyssa turned in Tegan's arms to Ace, cautious, but as always, polite. "Hello. I'm Nyssa of Traken. How do you do?" 

"I'm Ace of Perivale," she said with aplomb. "And I reckon we'll have a good view from the kitchens. These guys are Crespallion, and Crespallions make great cocktails." She pondered her statement for a moment. "I mean, they mix great cocktails. I should be more careful with word choice – maybe that's what the Professor means when he talks about diplomacy." 

The kitchens were much more utilitarian, and the cosier for it. Tegan sat cross-legged on a bench facing a window that looked down on the docking bay. Instead of a dying sun, she watched the honoured guests disembarking – an endlessly amusing space-opera, with heads in jars and a giant trampoline. At the other end of the bench, Ace explained to a white-coated Crespallion chef, with expansive gestures, the intricacies of igniting consumable beverages. 

Nyssa perched on the edge of the bench and turned her glass around in her hands. "What is the significance of the small umbrella?" 

Tegan sipped her own lurid purple concoction and felt her head swim. She didn't know what was in this thing, but it packed a punch. "It's so you know you're having fun." 

"But umbrellas are for rainy days. On Earth, as I understand it, rainy days traditionally represent sad feelings." Nyssa held the tiny pink umbrella over her head, as if it were raining here in the kitchens. There was a faint pink glow to her cheeks, and she spoke with extreme care, the way you did when you didn't want people to know quite how tipsy you actually were. 

Tegan glanced around her. It wasn't dark, and the only music was the clatter of dishes, but the kitchens were frantic enough that nobody was paying them the slightest bit of attention. She leaned down to shelter under Nyssa's cocktail umbrella with her. "Do you feel sad right now?" She spoke softly; her mouth against the soft skin of Nyssa's cheek. 

"Not particularly," Nyssa said, and turned to face Tegan. She smiled, a little wicked smile that was delightful to Tegan's slightly addled senses, and kissed Tegan gently. It went on for a long time while the kitchens bustled around them, all soft lips and curling hair and the taste of exotic alien liqueurs. 

"What are you doing?" Adric's voice interrupted what was turning out to be a good party after all. He stood by the bench with an expression of horror on his face. For a moment, Tegan's stomach dropped, then she recognised the expression as one that she'd seen on her brother's when she was thirteen and kissing Bradley Summers after the football one Saturday. It wasn't that she was kissing a girl; it was that she was kissing anyone. 

She slipped off the bench, but kept her arm around Nyssa's shoulder. "Something you'll understand when you're older, you squirt." 

Adric sputtered in protest, but she and Nyssa headed for the door. The Doctor had obviously returned. Tegan looked over her shoulder to see Ace waving, a smoking martini glass in one hand and a small flamethrower in the other. She waved back, and went to find the TARDIS.


End file.
